Online PR

We had some great training recently from Craig McGinty on Online PR, because it’s an area we’re dealing with for our clients more and more.

We worked specifically on how to write compelling press releases, and some of the more traditional aspects of PR that us geeky digital types often miss…

It’s all well and good knowing how to seed an article, but if the article’s not much good in the first place then it’s bound to struggle.

Craig reminded us of the Five Ws (and one H) that we learned at school a couple of years ago (ahem) :

Who

What

Why

Where

When

How

He also spoke about the inverted pyramid method of writing used in journalism; where you give the most important piece of information clearly and concisely first, then move on into further detail.

This is something I don’t make a conscious effort to do, but after thinking about it, it makes perfect sense in a digital world. Because people don’t read a blog or a website in the same way they read newspapers – they scan quickly in a series of horizontal movements, then vertically down the left hand side (as shown in the diagram below from Jakob Nielsen’s useit.com.

Good stuff – the pyramid is a classic and still totally relevant online.

The other critical thing for online releases to be is totally keyword optimised in line with a search ‘market’ that’s proven to already exist… and stuffed with interesting content and links to drive new traffic to your target web site…